Scientific Work in Germany

Abstract

DR. H. KALMUS, of the Galton Laboratory, University College, London, W.C.I, has received the following information from the French zone of occupation of Germany, in a letter from Prof. Alfped Kühn. Prof. Alfred Kühn left the Zoological Institute in Göttingen in 1937 and went to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut fur Biologie in Berlin. In the autumn of 1943 he was able to evacuate his department from there to Hechingen, Hohenzollern, and thus all his apparatus and library have been saved. Work in this institution has continued since the occupation first by the Americans and then by the French under the protection of the American T-force and the Mission Scientifique. In December 1945, Prof. Kühn was appointed to the chair of zoology in the University of Tubingen in the French zone of occupation, and he is now trying to move the other biological departments of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute to Tübingen. A botanical department under Melchers, working on plant hormones and plant viruses, has provisional quarters in the botanical department of the University. Hartmann and Bauer are working in Hechingen, Hohenzollern, and Hämmerling in Langenargen am Bodensee in the Institute for Limnology. Prof. Kühn has lost all his close collaborators and is training young workers. His main interest at present is the chemical action of genes; in this work he is collaborating with Prof. Butenandt, who occupies the chair of physiological chemistry in Tübingen.